CMS Retrospective | UX By Diana

CMS "RETROSPECTIVE"

Takeaways

Tying user flows to user goals and familiar workflows is crucial.

I learned how critical it was to understand our users, their goals, frustrations, and current workflows before creating any kind of designs. By doing that, I gained clarity on how I could design systems and user flows that help them do their job more efficiently with better agency to accomplish their goals while removing frustrations.

Redundancy is a big issue with global lists.

Though very separate concepts, condition symptoms as well as treatment side effects and benefits heavily overlap in language. Consolidating synonyms is critical to keeping terminology across the platform consistent, clean, and digestible.

To mitigate a mess of synonyms throughout the database, we enabled text suggestions so content writers could more easily use consistent terms instead of synonyms like “decreases” vs “reduces” or “blurry” vs “blurred” when applying descriptors to global list items. We also built synonym detection into the platform search and review features to account for the same issue for users on the public site.

Less is more when it comes to referencing while writing.

We initially hypothesized that keeping a spreadsheet format would be more familiar to Julie, demanding less adjustment of her process. Through interviews, we discovered that while the spreadsheets did allow her to refer to all points on one screen and therefore recognize incomplete components, the overwhelming amount of information made it difficult to decipher the specific information she needed.

So we chose to abandon spreadsheets for forms in order to focus the writers’ attention on the immediate goal, while still providing a higher-level view of relevant information. Through shifting to form designs and observing Julie’s behaviors and comments with our prototypes, we found this format much more effective, conducive to accuracy, and pleasant to use.

Large samples sizes are critical to accurate data and scalable products.

This was a unique project in that I was designing for just one user, which allowed for more flexible and real-time communication, rapid adaptation, and very rewarding feedback and results.

However, it of course was not reflective of a typical user base. While Julie was the only content writer at the time and for the near future, we were looking at hiring more writers at some point. Looking back, I would have done more external research as a precautionary measure to validate the concept outside of just her needs.

UX is a thrilling intersection of psychology, hard data, and aesthetics :)

Syndio’s CMS was my first experience in UX design and research. It ignited my passion for UX, discovering it as a beautiful union of creativity and practicality meant to serve and advocate for users while benefiting the company at the same time. It also introduced me to my love for product team dynamics and tech startup culture in general.

Working in such a small team and having no prior experience or on-the-job training presented me with a great opportunity to build my confidence in navigating the unknown and self-teaching within this accessible, exciting, and creative field.

Testimonial

Julie Ryan

Content Writer

Coworker

Syndio Health | USA

"Diana was a pleasure to work with! She helped make my job a million times easier and I always loved our video calls. Would highly recommend her for any project. ❤️"

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